Thanks for all the answers.  The guy that sold them never knew the
covers needed to be glued on. He says he got them this way - used.
They slid around and smashed into those little, weak, de-coupling
capacitors enough to knock them off and/or loosen them excessively.
It took absolutely no effort to "let" them ALL fall off...

I got several answers about glue, or tape, and was inspired to write to the
manufacturer. They confirm that they were supplied with adhesive tape, which
makes the design much better since they would glue to the faces of the big chips
and not slide into or hit the small capacitors.  (I like my idea about ears going over
the top of the PC board since that would prevent physical damage in all cases,
even if the glue was skipped, but it would be more expensive to make...)

When I forwarded all of my suspicions and the advise I had been given,
(no names were used, list or people),
and after seeing the e-mail from the manufacturer explaining the proper use of the
covers with the supplied adhesive tape, the seller is willing to make a full adjustment.
(Thank goodness I found an honest man with a conscience...)

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.  I was somewhat afraid of using the
covers from the start, but knew of and trusted the manufacturer. It was a shame that
a warning about the tape was not printed on the face of the cover since once they
are in the machine no one would notice it... It might have saved lots of people
lots of grief...  Since I'm sure other people might run across something like this, this
is just a "heads up" to keep an eye out for it... ;-)

One thing to keep in mind is that with 36 decoupling capacitors totally missing
this stick tested 45 times through an 11 test loop perfectly...

                                  Rick Glazier

----- Original Message -----
From: "Russ Poffenberger"
Those covers are called "heat spreaders", kind of like a heat sink. If you
have good ventilation in your case, you should be OK without them. However,
you could probably get some kind of thermally conductive glue and glue them
back on.

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